quarter century...weird

Hi everyone. Sorry I´ve haven´t written in a while...the one post a week isn´t really happening and I kinda doubt it ever will. Anyway, so much has happened since my lat post, so I´ll try to summarize it all in a short post. I´m going to start with the most recent (since it´s the freshest in my mind)...

This past week was FBT (Field Based Training...Peace Corps is a little crazy with all the acronyms). My WATSAN (Water and Sanitation) group went to Paracas in the province of Ica, which is just south of Lima - about a 3 hour bus ride. The week was really wonderful except for Friday when about 75% of the group got food poisioning and could barely move except to go to the bathroom to give it a workout of a lifetime. Aside from that, the week was great experience in working with NGOs, doing manual labor, and talking with families door to door. I definitely feel more prepared to go to site now! I´m already so excited to get to work to promote some of the things we´ve been learning during the past few months of training.

As mostly of you know, last Sunday was my birthday - thank you for all of the birthday wishes! One of my fellow aspirantes gave me a bouquet of flowers on Friday whish was awesome and totally unexpected. I woke up Sunday morning to ¨Feliz Cumpleaños¨ hugs and kisses from my host family. Soon after my extended host family came over to celebrate. I´ll tell you what, there´s nothing like delicious chocolate cake at 9am...I loved it! After that I packed to get ready for FBT. My WATSAN group wished me a Happy Birthday and we all ate dinner together in Paracas, they sang to me and I got to try my first pisco sour (Paracas is about half an hour away from Pisco, so you pretty much have to drink pisco sours). All in all it was a great birthday!

Last we we had 2 days of feria (not sure what the translation is) which was each language group being assigend a Peruvian province and doing a presentation on it in Spanish. My class got Arequipa which is a beautiful province in southern Peru (Arequipa is also the second largest city in the country). My group decided to present in the form of a TV news program. I was the announcer and the others were reporters. It went very well, but the best/most embarrassing part was dressing up in traditional ariquipeño clothing and doing a dance with a classmate for the entertainment of the other aspirantes and training staff. I felt ridiculous, but people seemed to enjoy it and the clothing was amazing.

I´m sure I´m leaving out some other things that have happened or that I´ve done, but those are all the highlights I can think of for the moment. In general, things are going very well. I am getting homesick which I´m pretty sure is because of the upcoming holidays, but I know I´ll be fine and get through it. I hope all is well in the US. I miss you all and am thinking of you all at home. Chau!